Robert C. Fuller
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195369175
- eISBN:
- 9780199871186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369175.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Metaphor structures a great deal of human thought and knowledge. Most metaphors originate in bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and our efforts to manipulate ...
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Metaphor structures a great deal of human thought and knowledge. Most metaphors originate in bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and our efforts to manipulate objects in our immediate environment. The final chapter thus explores how these “embodied categories of thought” influence both why and how we think about religious topics (e.g., the body of Christ, the lifting of burdens, finding balance, being touched by Jesus, opening our heart to God). A concluding observation notes that studying the biological sources of religion need not be reductionistic. Indeed, a spirituality in the flesh might lead to a spirituality of the flesh that affirms nature itself as teeming with sacred significance.Less
Metaphor structures a great deal of human thought and knowledge. Most metaphors originate in bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and our efforts to manipulate objects in our immediate environment. The final chapter thus explores how these “embodied categories of thought” influence both why and how we think about religious topics (e.g., the body of Christ, the lifting of burdens, finding balance, being touched by Jesus, opening our heart to God). A concluding observation notes that studying the biological sources of religion need not be reductionistic. Indeed, a spirituality in the flesh might lead to a spirituality of the flesh that affirms nature itself as teeming with sacred significance.
Klaus J. Hansen
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195369786
- eISBN:
- 9780199871292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369786.003.003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter argues why the Mormon prophet's contributions must be seen as the intersecting of American culture and Smith's own particular religious imagination. Comparing Smith to Samuel Johnson and ...
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This chapter argues why the Mormon prophet's contributions must be seen as the intersecting of American culture and Smith's own particular religious imagination. Comparing Smith to Samuel Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, the chapter uses the question of Smith's relationship with his father as a suggestive illustration of how personal loss becomes religious restoration, and a private experience taps universal appeal.Less
This chapter argues why the Mormon prophet's contributions must be seen as the intersecting of American culture and Smith's own particular religious imagination. Comparing Smith to Samuel Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, the chapter uses the question of Smith's relationship with his father as a suggestive illustration of how personal loss becomes religious restoration, and a private experience taps universal appeal.
Richard Dilworth Rust
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195369786
- eISBN:
- 9780199871292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369786.003.004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter illuminates Smith's religious-making imagination by juxtaposing him with America's greatest myth-making novelist of the 19th century, Herman Melville. Melville revealed a recurrent ...
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This chapter illuminates Smith's religious-making imagination by juxtaposing him with America's greatest myth-making novelist of the 19th century, Herman Melville. Melville revealed a recurrent interest in things Mormon, and the most telling preoccupation that unites them, the chapter finds, is not so much the heights they achieved as successful creators of epic systems, as the depths they plumb as thought-divers, exploring the darkest abysses of human experience and of the tragic universe.Less
This chapter illuminates Smith's religious-making imagination by juxtaposing him with America's greatest myth-making novelist of the 19th century, Herman Melville. Melville revealed a recurrent interest in things Mormon, and the most telling preoccupation that unites them, the chapter finds, is not so much the heights they achieved as successful creators of epic systems, as the depths they plumb as thought-divers, exploring the darkest abysses of human experience and of the tragic universe.
Andrew Greeley and Paul Wink
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520238176
- eISBN:
- 9780520938779
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520238176.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter studies the model of Catholic revolution. Pre-1965, the model was very clear and precise—being Catholic entailed uniform acceptance of ecclesiastical dictate. This model was so hallowed ...
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This chapter studies the model of Catholic revolution. Pre-1965, the model was very clear and precise—being Catholic entailed uniform acceptance of ecclesiastical dictate. This model was so hallowed and so unquestioned that its violation still affronts right-wing Catholics. The model has changed but comprehending the religious dynamics of the change is important. The theory is based upon the works of Weber, Parsons, Geertz, James, and Otto. It contends that religion is originally and primarily behavior that occurs in the dimension of the human personality called the preconscious. Religion originates in hope renewing experiences, which leave back in the imagination, residues that provide explanations for the meaning and purpose of human life. These residues, constituted out of symbols, and experiences combined, constitute religious imagination. Religious imagination variables can function in two ways—”intervening” and “interacting.”Less
This chapter studies the model of Catholic revolution. Pre-1965, the model was very clear and precise—being Catholic entailed uniform acceptance of ecclesiastical dictate. This model was so hallowed and so unquestioned that its violation still affronts right-wing Catholics. The model has changed but comprehending the religious dynamics of the change is important. The theory is based upon the works of Weber, Parsons, Geertz, James, and Otto. It contends that religion is originally and primarily behavior that occurs in the dimension of the human personality called the preconscious. Religion originates in hope renewing experiences, which leave back in the imagination, residues that provide explanations for the meaning and purpose of human life. These residues, constituted out of symbols, and experiences combined, constitute religious imagination. Religious imagination variables can function in two ways—”intervening” and “interacting.”
Terryl L. Givens
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195369786
- eISBN:
- 9780199871292
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369786.003.008
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter connects Joseph Smith's religion-making, in both its scope and its method, to the intellectual revolution called Romanticism. Like all intellectual revolutionaries of that era from ...
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This chapter connects Joseph Smith's religion-making, in both its scope and its method, to the intellectual revolution called Romanticism. Like all intellectual revolutionaries of that era from Malthus to Marx to Darwin, Joseph Smith rearticulated the fundamental vision of his field of influence in terms of contestation, struggle, and dynamism. His collapse of sacred distance, rupturing of the canon, doctrines of pre-existence and theosis, and gestures toward a comprehensive, scriptural Ur-Text—all betoken an emphasis on process over product, and a precarious tension between the searching and certainty that characterized both his personality and the faith he founded.Less
This chapter connects Joseph Smith's religion-making, in both its scope and its method, to the intellectual revolution called Romanticism. Like all intellectual revolutionaries of that era from Malthus to Marx to Darwin, Joseph Smith rearticulated the fundamental vision of his field of influence in terms of contestation, struggle, and dynamism. His collapse of sacred distance, rupturing of the canon, doctrines of pre-existence and theosis, and gestures toward a comprehensive, scriptural Ur-Text—all betoken an emphasis on process over product, and a precarious tension between the searching and certainty that characterized both his personality and the faith he founded.
Bjorn Krondorfer
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804768993
- eISBN:
- 9780804773430
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804768993.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This book examines how men open their intimate lives and thoughts to the public through confessional writing. It examines writings—by St. Augustine, a Jewish ghetto policeman, an imprisoned Nazi ...
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This book examines how men open their intimate lives and thoughts to the public through confessional writing. It examines writings—by St. Augustine, a Jewish ghetto policeman, an imprisoned Nazi perpetrator, and a gay American theologian—that reflect sincere attempts at introspective and retrospective self-investigation, often triggered by some wounding or rupture and followed by a transformative experience. The book takes seriously the vulnerability exposed in male self-disclosure while offering a critique of the religious and gendered rhetoric employed in such discourse. The religious imagination, it argues, allows men to talk about their intimate, flawed, and sinful selves without having to condemn themselves or to fear self-erasure. Herein lies the greatest promise of these confessions: by baring their souls to judgment, these writers may also transcend their self-imprisonment.Less
This book examines how men open their intimate lives and thoughts to the public through confessional writing. It examines writings—by St. Augustine, a Jewish ghetto policeman, an imprisoned Nazi perpetrator, and a gay American theologian—that reflect sincere attempts at introspective and retrospective self-investigation, often triggered by some wounding or rupture and followed by a transformative experience. The book takes seriously the vulnerability exposed in male self-disclosure while offering a critique of the religious and gendered rhetoric employed in such discourse. The religious imagination, it argues, allows men to talk about their intimate, flawed, and sinful selves without having to condemn themselves or to fear self-erasure. Herein lies the greatest promise of these confessions: by baring their souls to judgment, these writers may also transcend their self-imprisonment.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804768993
- eISBN:
- 9780804773430
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804768993.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This book examines confessions by men as a particular style of gendered writing, and the related issues of religiosity and masculinity. From St. Augustine to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Calel Perechodnik, ...
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This book examines confessions by men as a particular style of gendered writing, and the related issues of religiosity and masculinity. From St. Augustine to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Calel Perechodnik, and Donald Boisvert, these men turn to confessional writing as a mode of self-examination, opening their intimate lives and thoughts to the public during particular personal circumstances and in particular moments of history. Confessional writings reflect the sincere attempts of men to lay bare aspects of themselves that would otherwise have remained hidden. In looking at confessiography, the book brings together four areas that are, each for their own reasons, complicated and highly contested: men, religion, gender, and confessions. It argues that through the religious imagination, men are able to talk about their intimate selves, their flaws and sins, without having to condemn themselves entirely or to fear self-erasure.Less
This book examines confessions by men as a particular style of gendered writing, and the related issues of religiosity and masculinity. From St. Augustine to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Calel Perechodnik, and Donald Boisvert, these men turn to confessional writing as a mode of self-examination, opening their intimate lives and thoughts to the public during particular personal circumstances and in particular moments of history. Confessional writings reflect the sincere attempts of men to lay bare aspects of themselves that would otherwise have remained hidden. In looking at confessiography, the book brings together four areas that are, each for their own reasons, complicated and highly contested: men, religion, gender, and confessions. It argues that through the religious imagination, men are able to talk about their intimate selves, their flaws and sins, without having to condemn themselves entirely or to fear self-erasure.
Herbert Robinson Marbury
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479835966
- eISBN:
- 9781479875030
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479835966.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This concluding chapter looks at the contemporary world and the ongoing deployment of exodus within a politics of freedom. Black political freedom as a primary goal recedes and becomes but one among ...
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This concluding chapter looks at the contemporary world and the ongoing deployment of exodus within a politics of freedom. Black political freedom as a primary goal recedes and becomes but one among many competing interests that mean fulfillment. Class, gender, sexuality, and theological commitments are among the many social forces that shape the vision of Canaan in the black religious imagination. Each competes with black political freedom as an end in interpreting the exodus story. The politics enacted to pursue each continue to arise in cloud and fire forms as best suited to achieve its ends. The chapter also recounts Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s iconic march in Selma, Alabama in March 1965.Less
This concluding chapter looks at the contemporary world and the ongoing deployment of exodus within a politics of freedom. Black political freedom as a primary goal recedes and becomes but one among many competing interests that mean fulfillment. Class, gender, sexuality, and theological commitments are among the many social forces that shape the vision of Canaan in the black religious imagination. Each competes with black political freedom as an end in interpreting the exodus story. The politics enacted to pursue each continue to arise in cloud and fire forms as best suited to achieve its ends. The chapter also recounts Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s iconic march in Selma, Alabama in March 1965.
Patrick Collinson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719084423
- eISBN:
- 9781781702031
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719084423.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
When members of the Elizabethan parliaments demanded of their queen that she marry or otherwise determine the succession to the crown, they sometimes spoke with feeling of England. Early modernists ...
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When members of the Elizabethan parliaments demanded of their queen that she marry or otherwise determine the succession to the crown, they sometimes spoke with feeling of England. Early modernists hope that they may at least be permitted to write of ‘patriotism’. Granted that there were many ‘patrias’, from the homestead and parish pump upwards and outwards, this chapter focuses on that species of patriotism which was national sentiment. Where did national patriotic sentiment come from, or, a more modest and manageable question, where and how did it find a voice? This chapter suggests that there was a source of nationhood, the religious imagination, which was the conscience, informed and excited by the Bible.Less
When members of the Elizabethan parliaments demanded of their queen that she marry or otherwise determine the succession to the crown, they sometimes spoke with feeling of England. Early modernists hope that they may at least be permitted to write of ‘patriotism’. Granted that there were many ‘patrias’, from the homestead and parish pump upwards and outwards, this chapter focuses on that species of patriotism which was national sentiment. Where did national patriotic sentiment come from, or, a more modest and manageable question, where and how did it find a voice? This chapter suggests that there was a source of nationhood, the religious imagination, which was the conscience, informed and excited by the Bible.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804768993
- eISBN:
- 9780804773430
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804768993.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This book has explored how men present, perform, and reflect upon themselves through confessions. The male confessant invests in particular self-revelations and in particular choices of opening ...
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This book has explored how men present, perform, and reflect upon themselves through confessions. The male confessant invests in particular self-revelations and in particular choices of opening himself up to the public, in a manner that is multivocal, manifold, densely enriched, ambiguous, and at times contradictory. The narrower his presentation of himself (such as Oswald Pohl or Donald Boisvert), the less trustworthy the testimony that his leaves of himself. The deeper the male confessant's presentation of himself (like St. Augustine and Calel Perechodnik), the less solipsistic the male gazing. The book has also argued that the religious imagination can transcend the confines of the mirror's surface and can give rise to an interiority in which the soul is naked in the face of another. It has also discussed moral agency, the (heterosexual) male body, the intimate (female) other, and the “becomingness” through sexual practices, as well as the political dimension of the intersection of masculinity, religion, and nation building, in men's confessions.Less
This book has explored how men present, perform, and reflect upon themselves through confessions. The male confessant invests in particular self-revelations and in particular choices of opening himself up to the public, in a manner that is multivocal, manifold, densely enriched, ambiguous, and at times contradictory. The narrower his presentation of himself (such as Oswald Pohl or Donald Boisvert), the less trustworthy the testimony that his leaves of himself. The deeper the male confessant's presentation of himself (like St. Augustine and Calel Perechodnik), the less solipsistic the male gazing. The book has also argued that the religious imagination can transcend the confines of the mirror's surface and can give rise to an interiority in which the soul is naked in the face of another. It has also discussed moral agency, the (heterosexual) male body, the intimate (female) other, and the “becomingness” through sexual practices, as well as the political dimension of the intersection of masculinity, religion, and nation building, in men's confessions.
Philip Sheldrake
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262015523
- eISBN:
- 9780262295840
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262015523.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter focuses on the important role played by landscape in the Christian religious imagination. It argues for the ambiguity of “landscape” in the sense that locales like forests, fields, and ...
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This chapter focuses on the important role played by landscape in the Christian religious imagination. It argues for the ambiguity of “landscape” in the sense that locales like forests, fields, and mountains are both geographic realities and imaginary realities. Many locales are considered powerful symbols of fear or desire. According to Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory, “Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.” This means that landscape is irreducibly historical since it portrays the material world mediated through human experience. It is also inevitably linked with issues of power because it provides the physical features upon which human beings draw and shape unique identities and distinct worldviews.Less
This chapter focuses on the important role played by landscape in the Christian religious imagination. It argues for the ambiguity of “landscape” in the sense that locales like forests, fields, and mountains are both geographic realities and imaginary realities. Many locales are considered powerful symbols of fear or desire. According to Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory, “Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.” This means that landscape is irreducibly historical since it portrays the material world mediated through human experience. It is also inevitably linked with issues of power because it provides the physical features upon which human beings draw and shape unique identities and distinct worldviews.
Serinity Young
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780195307887
- eISBN:
- 9780190659714
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780195307887.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
The desire to transcend the mundane and the terrestrial, and to reach new heights of spiritual experience, has been expressed through myths, folk tales, and the arts throughout the world and across ...
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The desire to transcend the mundane and the terrestrial, and to reach new heights of spiritual experience, has been expressed through myths, folk tales, and the arts throughout the world and across centuries. Flight from both the captivity of earth’s gravity and the mental constraints of time-bound desire are the backbone of myth-making. Women and goddesses have figured prominently in such myths, both as independent actors and as guides for men. Women Who Fly is a history of religious and social ideas about such aerial females as expressed in legends, myths, rituals, sacred narratives, and artistic productions. It is also about the varied symbolic uses of women in mythology, religion, and society that have shaped, and continue to shape, our social and psychological reality. The motif of the flying female is an intriguing and unstudied area of the history of both religion and iconography. It is a broad topic. Rather than place restrictions on this theme (or its imagery), or force it into the confines of any one discipline or cultural perspective, the goal here instead is to celebrate its thematic and cultural diversity, while highlighting commonalities and delineating the religious and social contexts in which it developed. Aerial women are surprisingly central to any full and accurate understanding of the similarities between various religious imaginations, through which these flying females have carved trajectories over time.Less
The desire to transcend the mundane and the terrestrial, and to reach new heights of spiritual experience, has been expressed through myths, folk tales, and the arts throughout the world and across centuries. Flight from both the captivity of earth’s gravity and the mental constraints of time-bound desire are the backbone of myth-making. Women and goddesses have figured prominently in such myths, both as independent actors and as guides for men. Women Who Fly is a history of religious and social ideas about such aerial females as expressed in legends, myths, rituals, sacred narratives, and artistic productions. It is also about the varied symbolic uses of women in mythology, religion, and society that have shaped, and continue to shape, our social and psychological reality. The motif of the flying female is an intriguing and unstudied area of the history of both religion and iconography. It is a broad topic. Rather than place restrictions on this theme (or its imagery), or force it into the confines of any one discipline or cultural perspective, the goal here instead is to celebrate its thematic and cultural diversity, while highlighting commonalities and delineating the religious and social contexts in which it developed. Aerial women are surprisingly central to any full and accurate understanding of the similarities between various religious imaginations, through which these flying females have carved trajectories over time.
Helen Deutsch
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226143828
- eISBN:
- 9780226143859
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226143859.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter investigates the desire that fuels Johnsonian commemoration. It suggests that commemoration of Johnson is indeed fueled by a religious imagination of a communion with Johnson's spirit. ...
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This chapter investigates the desire that fuels Johnsonian commemoration. It suggests that commemoration of Johnson is indeed fueled by a religious imagination of a communion with Johnson's spirit. This chapter also argues that criticisms on the commemoration in critical texts as well as in communal rituals and museums hinge on the material remainder of worshipful fantasies of transcendence.Less
This chapter investigates the desire that fuels Johnsonian commemoration. It suggests that commemoration of Johnson is indeed fueled by a religious imagination of a communion with Johnson's spirit. This chapter also argues that criticisms on the commemoration in critical texts as well as in communal rituals and museums hinge on the material remainder of worshipful fantasies of transcendence.
